- Position1 of 3›
- Yes, doping should be allowed
- Argument‹7 of 7
Doping would make sport more interesting
The benefits of doping in sports, on an entertainment level, vastly outweigh the potential disadvantages. Who doesn't want to see stronger, bigger, tougher athletes compete? Sports are, after all, designed to display many facets of peak human physical condition, and doping just ramps that higher and higher to the upper limits of possibility.
The argument
Competition at the highest level offers an unmatched display of athletic ability, and this argument holds that permitting performance-enhancing drugs would extend that display rather than corrupt it. Natural skill coupled with performance-enhancing drugs would make sport more interesting and entertaining to watch, because what the audience values — the demonstration of what a human body can be made to do — would be pushed further than unaided training can push it. The most concrete prediction concerns records. Allowing performance-enhancing drugs in sport would lead to smashed world records as stronger and faster competitors with more endurance enter their disciplines. Records mark the current ceiling of performance, and a ceiling that moves is precisely what draws an audience: watching the best of the best reach new heights in pursuit of their heavily coveted goals is offered as the sport's chief attraction, and superhuman feats of that kind would catapult sport into a never-before-seen stratosphere. The second claim concerns fairness, and runs against the usual objection. Elite sport currently rewards a genetic distribution nobody chose, so the advantage a biologically gifted athlete holds over a disadvantaged one is itself unearned. Permitting enhancement would allow elevated fairness among both biologically gifted and disadvantaged athletes, because the disadvantaged competitor would have access to a means of closing a gap that effort alone could not close. On this reading doping equalises rather than distorts, and a closer contest is a more interesting one. Taken together, the argument promises higher peaks and narrower margins — more spectacular performances and more competitive fields, providing greater entertainment for years to come. Because both effects increase what audiences come to sport for, this argument holds that doping should be allowed.
Context
Watching bigger, stronger, faster humans playing sport would make for a better spectacle.
Premises
Counter-arguments
The excitement in sport doesn't come from the physical attributes of the competitors. It comes from watching humans push the natural limits of their body. Competition in sport is not based upon who can inject the most steroids into their body, but who can outperform everyone else with their talent, skill, natural ability, and hard work. Entertainment should not be so easily attributed to who can hit the most home runs or who can barrel down the competition with brute force; it emerges from the two best teams or individual competitors going at it. Doping removes this element from sport, and makes sport less, not more, interesting.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P3] Part of the excitement comes from watching humans push their bodies to their natural limit. This would be lost if doping is permitted.